


the purest specimen of truth

by scullyitsme



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Gen, Tumblr Challenge, a gratuitous "she blinded me with science" reference that is based in reality, endearing references to "uncle" walter skinner, i used real science!!!, in which there is footsie, mulder and scully go to the science march, mulder wrote a book or something, nerdy protest signs, scully cures an incurable disease and probably wins the nobel prize, the fic you'd never write, this could have used some sexual intercourse, tropes that have probably been done before but i love them?, william is a salty teen, william is alive and with mulder and scully and an angsty teen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-27
Updated: 2017-04-27
Packaged: 2018-10-24 18:40:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10747548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scullyitsme/pseuds/scullyitsme
Summary: Mulder scoffed, “Scully — you fucking cured Tay-Sachs.”“No,” she snapped, pointing her Sharpie at him, “I did not cure it. Not yet.”“Recombiant Adeno-Associated Virus PHP.B Serotype for Cross-Correctional Enzyme Transfer Across the Blood Brain Barrier in Lipid Storage Disorders,” he recited on a single breath, “Sounds like a cure to me.”She gave him a warm smile, “You memorized the title of my paper?”





	the purest specimen of truth

**Author's Note:**

> this is actually for @leiascully‘s @xfficchallenges: the fic you’d never write. normally i don’t write “everything was beautiful and nothing hurt” william fic, let alone fics where he’s a teeeeeen! so i did that, but i was also at the science march in d.c. this weekend and obvi i had to fic an au where scully was there. notes at the end!

“What about _I was told there’d be pie_ — but it’s the symbol for pi?” **  
**

Scully sighed without looking up at him, though she did admittedly choke back a smile which she wasn’t about to reward him with.

“That _is_ clever,” she said, tapping the capped end of a Sharpie against her temple, “But I was partial to your original idea.”

He chuckled, “ _At the start of every disaster movie there’s a scientist being ignored?_ ”

She does smile then, peering at him overtop her reading glasses, which have slowly but surely become a permanent fixture atop her head over the last few years.

“Well, it’s _true_!” He bellows, playfully slapping his hand down atop the dining room table, “ _The Core, Dante’s Peak, The Day After Tomorrow, Twister_ —  that one we saw in theaters where they did an autopsy on Gwyneth Paltrow — ?”

“ _Contagion_ ,” she said, uncapping a marker with her teeth, “Which was impressively accurate, by the way. Not just the autopsy scene but later, the visual showing the way in which new viruses are formed by the recombination of DNA or RNA from different species of animal hosts?”  

“I’ll take your word for it,” he said, watching her squint intently down at her poster board, outlining the letters with a pathologist’s steady hand. He reached for a Sharpie, his finger grazing the back of her hand as he did. “So,” he said, flicking the cap off with his thumb, “Are you nervous?”

Her hand froze and she visibly stiffened. He immediately regretted bringing it up but as was his wont, he couldn’t help himself. 

“Yes,” she said after an agonizingly long moment of silence.“I still don’t understand why they asked me to speak,” she muttered, refusing to look up at him.

Mulder scoffed, “Scully — you fucking _cured_ Tay-Sachs.”

“No,” she snapped, pointing her Sharpie at him, “I did not _cure_ it. Not _yet._ ”

“ _Recombiant Adeno-Associated Virus PHP.B Serotype for Cross-Correctional Enzyme Transfer Across the Blood Brain Barrier in Lipid Storage Disorders_ ,” he recited on a single breath, “Sounds like a cure to me.”

She gave him a warm smile, “You memorized the title of my paper?”

“What can I say, I’m your biggest fan,” he grinned. She blushed, which of course only made him grin harder.

“I wish you’d look over my speech…” she said softly, picking up her marker again and retracing a giant letter S.

“I told you, Scully, they don’t want a speech from Fox Mulder: former FBI agent and profiler turned _New York Times_ best-selling, National Book Award-winning author,” he said, though not unkindly, “They want a speech from former FBI agent, medical doctor, professor, surgeon, American Medical Association award-winning, guest-lecture giving, honorary degree-having, _enigmatic_ , Dr. Dana Katherine Scully. Who also happens to be my best friend, the love of my life, and the mother of my child,” he said, “And a damn fine shot, too.”

“Oh, Mulder…” she tutted, shaking her head. As if on cue, they heard booming footfalls on the stairs and a second later Will skidded into the room, brandishing a poster board.

At 16, he was just about Mulder’s height and just as lanky and would probably be taller than him by the end of the summer; if his propensity for eating a week’s worth of groceries in a weekend was any indication of his basic metabolic rate and robust genetic profile.

Will cleared his throat, feigning seriousness, but his eyes sparkled with his father’s particular brand of indolence, “Brace yourselves for the unremitting sheen of my brilliance.”

Scully snorted. Mulder and Will threw her identical, indignant looks.

“I’m sorry,” she said, putting her hands up in surrender, “You are your father’s son, Will. No doubt about it.”

Mulder nudged her foot with his under the table, “Was there ever really any doubt, Scully?”

She gave him a long look, which did not get passed Will. Not much did. 

“I detect a rather abrupt change in atmosphere,” Will said, licking his finger and holding it in the air as if to sense a gust of wind.

“Son,” Mulder said gravely, not taking his eyes off Scully, “There’s something we have to tell you.”

Scully frowned, but before she could speak she saw the faintest glimmer in Mulder’s eye and relaxed a bit.

“What?” Will said, slumping down in the chair closest to his father, letting his sign drop to the floor.

“William…Uncle Walter …is your real dad,” Mulder said, his mouth twitching around a grin.

“That explains why I find you and Mom so _ridiculous_ ,” Will said, rolling his eyes in with such form that it rivaled even his mother’s practiced art.

“No, that’s just ‘cuz you’re an angsty _teen_ ,” Mulder said, ruffling his son’s hair. Will blushed at the childishness of the gesture — more so because, even as a young man, he still craved his father’s approval and affection and was relieved to be in receipt of it.

“Let’s see your sign, Will,” Scully said, capping a nearby Sharpie that was teetering precariously over the edge of the dining room table.

Will reached for the posterboard, brandishing it high above his head. With a flourish, he turned it so they could read its words as he proclaimed them.

“ _SCIENTISTS ARE PRO-TESTING_!” He bellowed, and while he expected his father to laugh heartily and give him a high-five, neither of them expected that his mother would laugh. Certainly no so hard.

After a minute or two went by, Will and Mulder both eyed Scully with a kind of nervous fascination, wondering if perhaps they would have to sedate her.

“Have you…have you ever seen her like this?” Will said, his voice low.

Mulder didn’t take his eyes off Scully, who had lowered her head onto the table, collapsed like a pop-tent. Her shoulders still shaking and her muffled giggles getting lost against the polished cherrywood.

“Once,” he said slowly, “But she was drugged.”

This only made Scully laugh harder. When she finally lifted her head, her face was a hot shade of blush-pink and sallow with tear stains.

“I appreciate the encouragement, Mom,” Will said, “But there’s no need to stroke my ego that much. It’s a good sign but it’s not that good.”

Scully reached up to wipe her eyes on the sleeve of her faded Quantico sweatshirt — which was older than Will by about a decade. She sighed deeply, then looked at them both through damp eyes and with a warm, almost cherubic smile.

“No, no, it is a good sign, Will. It’s just…” she sighed again, then drew in a long, sobering breath, “After all your father and I have been through, all that we’ve seen, the things that we’ve fought for…” she looked at Mulder, then. “The FBI sent me to your father because of my faith in science. They believed that science and reason would take him down. It didn’t, though. If anything it became an asset to his cause, and somewhere along the line I became — and so did the science I brought with me — the enemy.”

She lowered her eyes to her own sign, which suddenly seemed incapable of capturing everything she wanted — and needed — to say.

“The science helped _sometimes_ ,” Mulder said softly, “But _you_ were the real strength, Scully.”

She smiled up at him as he reached across the table to squeeze her hand, “I guess I just find it preposterous that we have to protest this at all,” she said, shrugging slightly, “That the persecution we faced as a result of our pursuit of the truth has somehow become so much bigger than just us, than the X-files.”

“This whole political _milieu_ is a freakin’ X-file,” Will grumbled.

“Nice 10-point vocab word there, dude.” Mulder said, clapping his son on the back.

“What can I say — my dad writes books.” Will shrugged.

Mulder beamed at Scully, who had rested her chin on her hand.

“Mulder,” she said, her voice hoarse from her laughing jag, “You never told me Skinner was a writer.”

* * *

“There must be almost 50,000 people out there,” Scully breathed, her nails digging into the skin of Mulder’s left hand. They could hear the roar of the crowd from beyond the stage — or possibly the rain, which was coming down in sheets. Of course, given that it was a crowd of scientists, they were prepared with slickers and umbrellas, upon which many had inscribed: _“Science predicted rain today.”_

“You’re gonna be great,” he said, kissing the side of her head which was damp with sweat or rain water or both.

“At least you’re not after Bill Nye,” Will offered, “No one wants to follow him.”

Scully groaned and pressed herself into Mulder’s chest.

“That’s true,” Mulder said, rubbing her back, “Plus, if you screw it all up, no one will remember because they’ll just remember Bill Nye and the fact that Thomas Dolby is gonna sing _She Blinded Me With Science_.”

“Wait, what song is this?” Will said, digging his phone out of his pocket presumably to YouTube it.

“It’s about your mother,” Mulder said, “Especially the lyric: _she’s tidied up and I can’t find anything_.”

“Mulder, I want a divorce,” Scully said from somewhere under Mulder’s chin.

“We’re not married, Scully.”

She pulled her head back from his coat and looked up at him, “Fox William Mulder, will you marry me?”

“Sure,” he grinned, running his thumb along her chin.

“Ok,” she said, pressing herself back into his chest again. Then, “Mulder—?”

“Yeah, Scully?”

“I want a divorce.”

* * *

The gray sky opened up over the undulating crowd.  If anyone looked up, they’d drown.  

“She looks — ” Will said, standing next to his father backstage, watching his mother at the podium.

“Brilliant? Amazing? Powerful? Divine?” Mulder finished.

Will snorted, “I was gonna say _scared shitless._ ”

Though her voice was steady and clear, from his vantage point Mulder could see what the audience could not: how Scully was anxiously lifting and lowering her stockinged foot from her sleek high heel, running the front of her toes along the back of her calf.

God, he was proud of her. God, he loved her.

“…to shed light on what has typically been sequestered away to labs and libraries and lecture halls. To put on full display the humanity that has for centuries stoked the fire of scientific inquiry, refined it, rejoiced in its revelations and more often, endured the frustrations of its arcanum.”

She looked up from her notes, then, and not out at the audience — but to her right, to him and to their son. The next words she spoke, he understood, she had not written for the masses, or for history — but for them.

“The truth exists whether we believe it or not. It endures even the most violent scrutiny and ruthless persecution. As we persist in seeking it, may we find solace in knowing that there is no person, no institution, no government, with jurisdiction over it. It can be suppressed, hidden, censored, altered or misappropriated, refuted and denied,” she paused, looking back to her audience who waited on baited breath, “What those who try to manipulate it beyond recognition, who try to eradicate it and replace it with calculated imitations, fail to recognize is that when all of those measures fail – and they will fail — what remains is the purest specimen of truth.”

She looks back at Mulder, then. At their son. And she smiles, “And it is those of us who want to believe such a truth can be revealed to us who will one day find it, and bring it into the light.”

**Author's Note:**

> bill nye really was there, thomas dolby really did sing 'she blinded me with science', i made up the title of scully's paper but it's based in real science so idk, maybe it could happen? also in my headcanon she wins the nobel prize later. also, sorry this didn't devolve into something sexier, i wanted to find a way to make it smutty, i swear. just imagine that when they left they gave will their amex and then they went to the smithsonian and fucked behind the apollo 11 exhibit


End file.
